Li-ion

The new budget aims to seize the opportunity in energy storage and EVs through a range of incentives. However, alongside demand, production and export, the government also needs to focus on e-waste management and Li-ion battery recycling to sustain raw material supply and minimize environmental impact.

The annual report has placed EVs at the heart of India’s decarbonization and called for an Indian answer to the U.S. ‘Motor City’ of Detroit, where electric vehicles and the batteries to run them could be manufactured.

Previously, a mere €240 million (Rs1,870 crore) was set to flow into the giga-factory. The corporation’s management reasoned new demand for its battery cells made more investment necessary.

Central government has thrown down the gauntlet to the nation’s largest motorbike and scooter manufacturers after they resisted a proposal to ban non-electric sales from 2025 onwards.

The German battery manufacturer will make products for electric trucks and buses at the facility, which is expected to employ 200 workers and produce 400 megawatt-hours of batteries annually.

Mining company Neometals and Manikaran Power have started a jointly funded study into the feasibility of establishing India’s first lithium refinery, which would process ore from the Mount Marion mine in Western Australia.

The NITI Aayog has suggested banning sales of non-electric two and three wheelers in 2025 and cars, trucks and buses five years later as well as forcing public fleets and the cars used by ride hailing apps to be electric.

The global energy storage market is poised to grow rapidly in the coming years, with Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) predicting $620 billion in investment over the next two decades will push cumulative global installations to 942 GW/2,857 GWh by 2040. Declining lithium-ion battery costs are driving much of this growth, with BNEF expecting the cost of utility-scale storage systems to fall roughly 52% through 2030, following an approximate 80% slide in the average price of lithium-ion battery packs in the first seven years of the current decade.

In news that will add urgency to Indian government efforts to establish a domestic storage industry, funding has apparently been secured for 16 GWh-plus production lines in Sweden and Germany. Is India at risk of being left in the starting blocks?

The government is considering financial incentives such as import and export duty waivers to woo battery manufacturers to set up a globally competitive manufacturing base in India.